• cornshark@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Why fear? You can just say oopsie, we didn’t expect the whole Europe and the west to throw their military might behind Ukraine, obviously we can’t fight them all. We did our best! Here are your sons back.

    Probably would be fine. Great even. I’m sure people would love their family back in one piece.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      8 minutes ago

      Yeah, that doesn’t account for his loss in the opening days, when the NATO nations were clearly preparing to write off the conquest of Ukraine as a terrible thing but do nothing substantive about it.

      Putin wanted to be cemented in history as bringing back a powerful Russia, and now he has an embarrassment. Dude is 73 and knows he has fewer years ahead than behind and it is now or never for his legacy.

      He might not be afraid for his safety or his people, but for his legacy.

    • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
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      17 minutes ago

      Being able to do that without losing face is one possible theory to why he keeps provoking NATO countries even while his three day special military operation is stalling at day 1609 with no end in sight - if they retaliated and joined in properly, he gets an excuse to stop as to not “continue” to WW3.